


Running

by windingriver



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Short One Shot, Sibling Incest, drabble-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3898756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windingriver/pseuds/windingriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda can't see how anything that's happened is right at all. </p>
<p>This isn't what victory is supposed to taste like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running

**Author's Note:**

> No hate for the incest please! You read the fic >.

.

_Born first..._

When it all ends, it is silent. 

There is nothing but the sound of her heart in her ears because that's all she can focus on. The Avengers, her teammates, want to comfort her. She can feel it in the air the way they glance at her with forlorn eyes, but none of their words would matter. None of their eyes do either. None of them but Hawkeye's at least. He sits beside her after her little episode, puts a hand on her shoulder and looks her in the eyes.

_"He is a hero."_

And she wants to laugh. She wants to giggle and turn her head to find her brother's blue eyes, alarming and piercing also filled with mirth because not too long ago no one would have called him that. The Avengers wanted them dead not even a week ago. If Pietro were here, he'd puff out his chest and grin at her and she'd smile and feel light. However, he's not here and all that's left is a mere idea of what was once there.

Yet she can still make it all out in her mind. From his broadened shoulders and tall stature to the exact shade of his white hair and every fleck of blue in his eyes, she remembers every feature of him. She remembers being twelve and  _growing_ up, developing curves and wondering why she had to wear more under her clothes than Pietro did. It was at that time of naivety that Pietro took glee in calling himself twelve minutes older. He told her men and women grew differently and because she was a woman she'd have breasts. That naturally didn't satisfy her so she dragged him practically by the ear to a bookstore to research what it meant. When she found out and he pestered her about it, it took nearly a week for her to shamefully whisper why. She remembers that was the reason why they didn't both have broad shoulders or grew like trees.   
  
In times that they weren't squatting in abandoned places or making 'friends' there was a lot of down time. For Wanda at least. Pietro took to being her protector like happiness to the free ones. He'd be out in the mornings till the afternoon, but not before setting her up with dinner, and not before making sure she knew where he was going. Most times she was too scared of being alone to not go with him. She was too scared of losing him to loosen the tight grip she had. There is comfort in knowing the other part of your soul is within arms reach, Wanda reasons. As she grew older she wanted some space to read the books she'd stolen when she was out. These were books about the Princesses and the Witches that cursed them. She found them terribly unfair and cruel. The witch was doing her job, not being mean essentially, but getting by and life and the Princess? She got to sit on her ass all day and rule around the ones beneath them, it always brought a sneer to Wanda's face whenever she thought about how unbalanced the scales were for the Witches and Princesses.

  
Pietro would ask and she'd tell him just what she thought of  _Sleeping Beauty,_ he'd laugh and her scrunched up nose and call her cute before pulling her into his arms and into bed. On nights that he was uninjured from his scavenging he was big spoon, on nights he was hurt she was big spoon. Sleeping little spoon felt better to her. Sleeping beside Pietro was a natural thing. Sleeping without him was almost impossible.

  
When the testing began she could hardly believe that they expected her to sleep without her brother beside her. She wanted to kick up a storm but there was a look in Pietro's eyes that told her she shouldn't. She knew why too; they both had the same reason. Stark. And she couldn't stand the idea that she was letting some great opportunity pass her by. Then the testing began.

And she both loathed and loved it. She loathed the pain that came from it, she loathed the prodding and she loathed the screams that left her. She absolutely abhorred the screams that left Pietro first. Those would haunt her; those would be her downfall. The shrieks and shouts of pure pain that made her scratch at her cell walls in worry in fear and make her kick and scream to see him when she heard silence. She loathed the way Pietro was so totally out of control when his powers first kicked in. She loved it when the testing began and Pietro passed. Pietro would smile broadly at her and through the walls, through his mind, through their connection she'd always hear the same promise she always wanted.

_"One day, we're going to leave and we're never going to look back. When we do leave, every day that you breath you will be loved."_

How could she not believe him? It was always we, because just like it was for her, there was no life without him.  
  
She loves her powers too, in a way. They're a part of her, like an extra eye or another arm. She can't hate who she is. Who she is, is the person Pietro considers precious and in that way she must be perfect. This is who she's become and when they first left, those three days of freedom were all she'd needed. That felt like the beginning to her. Pietro's hand in hers' a smile on both their faces as they wandered the world for the longest time; away from Strucker, away from the place that made fire sear through her veins and her brother vibrate like an object at their disposal. She loves that wherever they were in the world they were free to kiss and free to engage in the activities lovers were meant to engage in. The best part was they'd never have to tell anyone about their misfortune of being brother and sister. When their love progressed that of sibling she doesn't know.

She can't pinpoint on a timeline when she first decided she loved him. In their lab days they were allowed to see each other before a dose, after a session of experiments, and before bed. Except their doses in the beginning were small, not in large extracts. It was probably the first time they'd gotten in trouble with Stucker. 

They were seventeen and his powers were on being tested in a play simulation through a field where she was to destroy the testers coming her way and he was to leave his in a dust behind him so fast there would be whiplash ( _He'd asked her what it was and she'd calmly informed him it was the pain that came from moving too fast_ ). They tried it at first, but then she got hit by one of them and after letting out a shout of pain on the field, Pietro was by her side in an instant. He was faster in those days but too hard to handle. Yet when he gathered her into his arms and ran them away from the field in the split second, the split beat of the heart that she met his eyes as he ran, there was so much fierce determination to protect her she swears that her fate was signed.

Maybe it was earlier. 

No.

She knows when she first started loving him. 

It was from the moment after that incident when she asked him through the walls in his mind why he did it. Their punishment wasn't swift, although he survived it he was suffering when they threw him back in his cell. She crawled up against the wall pressed her ear to it but said nothing with her mouth. 

_"Are you awake?"_

_"Yes, did they hurt you?"_ She hears in his voice how tired he is, how exhausted he must be buy his question is full of ugency.

_"It doesn't matter, I'm fine. Are you?"_

_"Not very, but if you're fine, then I will be too."_ Her heart swells at the sentiment but she can't dawdle, he's likely to fall asleep soon so what she needs to know must be known immediately.

_"Why?"_

There is something different in his voice as he answers this, there is something more sure, more real, more full of depth than anything else he's ever told her when he says these words.

"Because you are my **one**."

One. That's what they were. A pair. One pair. One strong love in two bodies.

Wanda fought as an Avenger for a reason, she left that shelter that Hawkeye had pulled her into for a reason. She was there so that Pietro and her would never have to fight for another meal, would never second guess themselves, and would never have to be apart or separated by walls again. She was there so her and Pietro could be together and now they're not and she doesn't know what to do. She had a goal in mind when she decided to fight with the Avengers, a deal; they fight with the Avengers, they become the Avengers, they live a life of just righteousness. 

"We're touching down in a moment or so," Hawkeye tells her from across the aisle with a nod of his head. She meets his eyes and gives a blunt nod.   
  
In a moment or so she's going to be out of the clouds and on the ground, and her last thought as she runs her fingers through her hair and closes her eyes is that everything is unfair. She's been cheated out of a deal. This is unfair. For her whole life her brother put her before everyone, was even ready to take her from the job that she started, but he gave his life for another. When he swept in to take the bullets for Barton and the child, he hadn't even thought of her. He hadn't put her on top. In the end, not even she was enough to keep him from death.

Or maybe she's wrong.

Maybe in the end, Pietro was always running, and they were just running towards different goals. 

**.**

_... Gone first._

 

**Author's Note:**

> It's short and I might expand on it? Maybe write about the episode that happens in the jet that they're in right after it all ends? Maybe, idk, thoughts?


End file.
